On March 23, 2006, Jordan disclosed in a statement[11] that he had been diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis, and that with treatment, his medianlife expectancy was four years, though he said he intended to beat the statistics. He later posted on his Dragonmount blog to encourage his fans not to worry about him and that he intended to have a long and fully creative life.

Jordan died at approximately 2:45 p.m. EDT on September 16, 2007,[13] and a funeral service was held for him on Wednesday, September 19, 2007.[14] Jordan was cremated and his ashes buried in the churchyard of St. James Church in Goose Creek, outside Charleston.[15][16]

Jordan published 11 books of a total 14 in the main sequence of the Wheel of Time series. Reviewers and fans of the earlier books noted a slowing of the pace of events in the last few installments owing to the expansion of scale of the series as a whole.[17]

Because of his health problems, Jordan did not work at full force on the final installment A Memory of Light (later split into three volumes beginning with The Gathering Storm), but blog entries confirmed that he continued work on it until his death, and he shared all of the significant plot details with his family not long before he died.[18] He maintained that in doing so the book will get published even if "the worst actually happens."[19] On December 7, 2007, Tor Books announced that Brandon Sanderson had been chosen to finish the Wheel of Time series. Harriet McDougal, Jordan's widow, chose him after reading Mistborn: The Final Empire.[20]

In addition to the main sequence, Robert Jordan also wrote some accessory works:

The World of Robert Jordan's the Wheel of Time (November 6, 1997, reference book, written in collaboration with Teresa Patterson)

This reference book includes "The Strike at Shayol Ghul", a short story published online in 1996 which was republished in print as part of this reference book

New Spring (October 1998, novella, published in Tor's Legends anthology, edited by Robert Silverberg; the story is located in the third volume of the paperback edition; the hardcover is one volume)

New Spring (January 2004, novel, an expanded work superseding the earlier novella)

From the Two Rivers, a repackaging of the first half of The Eye of the World for a younger market, includes an additional prologue titled Ravens.

To the Blight, a repackaging of the second half of The Eye of the World for a younger market.

The Hunt Begins, a repackaging of the first half of The Great Hunt for a younger market.

New Threads in the Pattern, a repackaging of the second half of The Great Hunt for a younger market.

In 2010, with full permission of the Jordan estate, writer Chuck Dixon began adapting The Eye of the World into a comic books series published by Dynamite Entertainment. The individual comic books were later collected in volumes and released by Tor Books.[25] Notable illustrators who have worked on the series include Chase Conley, Marcio Fiorito, Francis Nuguit, and others.

The Fallon Blood (1980), published under the pen name Reagan O'Neal, was Jordan's second novel and first published novel. It was edited and published by Jordan's future wife, Harriet McDougal, for her personal imprint, Popham Press. After they finished promoting the book on tour, they began dating, and when Jordan asked McDougal to marry him, he began selling his books directly to Tom Doherty at Tor Books.[26] The following two books, The Fallon Pride (1981) and The Fallon Legacy (1982) were published under Tor's Forge imprint. Jordan originally planned to take the series much further:

I had intended to do a Southern arc of history. The general arc of history that is studied in the United States and recognized is the move out of New England—Pennsylvania and New York—into the Ohio valley, and from there west to California, but there was a southern arc, which was the move out of Virginia and the Carolinas into Louisiana and Mississippi, and from there into Texas, and from there through New Mexico and Arizona into California. And I wanted to follow that in a series of novels that I originally intended to go from the American Revolution through the Vietnam War, but I'll tell you the truth...I got tired of them. They were doing nicely, but I just got tired of them and said, "I want to do something else."[2]

Jordan was one of several writers who have written new Conan the Barbarian stories. When Tom Doherty obtained the rights, he needed a novel very quickly, so Jordan's wife Harriet McDougal recommended him because she knew he had written his first novel, Warriors of the Altaii, in thirteen days.

“

So he thought I could write something fast, and he was right, and I liked it. It was fun writing something completely over the top, full of purple prose, and in a weak moment I agreed to do five more and the novelization of the second Conan movie.

I've decided that those things were very good discipline for me. I had to work with a character and a world that had already been created and yet find a way to say something new about the character and the world. That was a very good exercise.

Some bibliographies also include Conan: King of Thieves; this was actually the working title of the second Conan movie, and hence also the title of Jordan's novelization. Jordan had already been hired to do the novelization and Tor had already applied for an ISBN when the title was changed to Conan the Destroyer.[28]

Warriors of the Altaii is Jordan's first novel, which remains unpublished; it is 98,000 words in length, and he finished it in thirteen days. Donald A. Wolheim at DAW Books made an offer for it, but revoked the offer when Jordan requested a small change in his contract.[27] When Harriet McDougal was Editorial Director for Ace Books, Tom Doherty hired Jim Baen to work under her, and when Doherty left Ace to start Tor Books in 1980, Baen followed, working at Tor for a few years before starting his own imprint, Baen Books.[29][30] Baen did not have a very high opinion of fantasy, and so he bought Warriors for Ace Books as a science fiction novel. When he left Ace for Tor, Susan Allison took his place and reverted the rights for the novel to Jordan. When McDougal returned to Charleston to start her own imprint, Popham Press, she met Jordan and published his first novel, The Fallon Blood.[31]

Jordan mentioned several times that he planned another fantasy series set in a different kind of world. He said that it would be a Shōgun-esque series about a man in his 30s who is shipwrecked in an unknown culture which would be similar to Seanchan culture in his Wheel of Time series[32] and world. The books would detail his adventures there and would have been titled Infinity of Heaven.[33]

He said that he would have begun writing these after finishing his work on the 12th and final main sequence book of The Wheel of Time. Jordan said, "Infinity of Heaven almost certainly will be written before the prequels, though I might do them between the Infinity books." Also according to Dragonmount.com, Jordan planned to write some side-story novels, before completely abandoning his decades-long work. Jordan had particularly stressed that this series would be significantly shorter than The Wheel of Time saga (about 6 books long and essentially two trilogies).